Six Miles to Charleston by Bruce Orr Read Free Book Online

raising the number of victims to incredible levels, Lavinia Fisher is often referred to as America’s first female serial killer. From the facts gathered, she does not fit the criteria. The Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI was created by Agent Roy Hazelwood and a handful of others. He was one of the original serial profilers and instrumental in creating the definition of what a serial killer is. It is the FBI who defines the criteria for a person to be identified as a serial killer, and that definition is a person who murders three or more people over a period of more than thirty days with a cooling-off period between each murder. Neither of the two corpses was ever proven to be a victim of anything the Fishers are accused of. The two bodies were never criminally connected with Lavinia Fisher or John Fisher at all. Even if they had been, that is still only two corpses, one less than the definition requires, unless you count the LaCoste cow found in the outhouse.

C HAPTER 3
    The Gang
    T HE F ORGOTTEN M EMBERS
    A stay in the City Jail, no matter how brief, was not a pleasant one. The City Jail, or as it was referred to back then, “The Gaol,” was built in 1802 to replace the Provost Dungeon. It was built over a potter’s field cemetery of slaves, vagrants and derelicts. A jail that was built to hold approximately 130 people often held 300 or more. The ancient building has often been described more as a place of torture rather than a jail or correctional facility. One estimate places the deaths at this location in the area of 10,000 or more. Whippings, beatings, physical assaults and sexual assaults were commonplace, and that was with the jailers (or gaolers as they were called) and prisoners alike. The bars on the windows did little to keep out the bone-chilling cold of Charleston’s winters or the stifling heat and humidity of the city’s summers. It also did little to keep out the insects and rodents that infested the city.
    In early times, the most dangerous of the prisoners were secured by being chained to a large ring in the center of the floor. These would be your violent offenders and your escape risks. This also would be the method for securing the severely mentally ill since the jail also served as an insane asylum. In later years, prisoners were kept seven or eight to a cage with a multitude of cages being kept on each floor. There was no separation of the sexes unless the guards removed the females for their own personal entertainment.
    There was no running water within the building, so therefore sanitary conditions were deplorable. Within the jail, wood chips were scattered on the floor. That was the prisoner’s bedding and quite often their toilet. Occasionally the chips would be changed, but not often. If you had suffered at the hands of your tormentors, you were returned to your cell and your open wounds were exposed to the filth of your living conditions. Infection and disease were rampant. What manners of death that were not created by infection, brought in from the harbor, blown in through the windows, carried in by the rats or dealt by the captors was often carried out by the prisoners upon themselves. Suicide was often a preferable fate.

    Old City Jail on Magazine Street where the Six Mile gang was held. Courtesy of author.

    The cage used to house seven to eight inmates Courtesy of author.
    Through the years, the jail underwent many redesigns. In 1822, the architect Robert Mills designed a four-story wing with one-man cells. This was done after public outcry over several escapes of violent prisoners. This wing was taken down in 1855 for the construction of an octagonal wing. That wing was originally four stories with a two-story octagonal tower. The tower and the fourth story were removed in 1886 after being severely damaged in the devastating earthquake that hit Charleston. The jail actually remained in service until 1939.
    Punishment for criminal offenses was no picnic